Series: Surrealism

In a soci­ety that has abol­ished every kind of adven­ture the only adven­ture that remains is to abol­ish that soci­ety. —Anonym­ous striker graf­fiti, Paris (May, 1968) …and this ol’ world ain’t got no back door. —The Marve­lettes, “Des­tin­a­tion: Any­where” (1968) So many stud­ies of surrealism’s activ­it­ies after the Second World War por­tray the events of 1968 as the movement’s apo­gee. Within the move­ment itself, those affil­i­ated with groups in Czechoslov­akia and France met for a con­fer­ence that pro­duced one of the most crit­ical and defin­it­ive of sur­real­ist pro­gram­matic texts, The Prague Plat­form; mean­while, out in the streets, spon­tan­eous upris­ings by work­ers, stu­dents, and dis­sid­ents shattered daily routines (and more) in Paris, Prague, Chicago, Dakar, Buenos Aires, Ber­lin, Lahore, Mex­ico City, Rome, Tokyo, ...
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The cur­rent declar­a­tion, rat­i­fied by all of our friends, was drawn up in Prague by the mem­bers of the Sur­real­ist Group in that city and those surre­alists who had come from France, between 5 and 18 April 1968, to take part in a series of events organ­ised around the exhib­i­tion The Pleas­ure Prin­ciple. The writers first placed the emphasis on the excep­tional affect­ive warmth that marked this encounter. In it they saw one of the determ­in­ing factors, the res­ult and guar­an­tee of the unre­served accord achieved in Prague, - with regard to the gen­eral per­spect­ives of sur­real­ism today and in the long term; - with regard to an under­stand­ing of the repress­ive sys­tem, in 1968, whose dif­fer­ences really seem, whatever the polit­ical ...
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For cen­tur­ies the sol­diers, priests and civil agents of imper­i­al­ism, in a wel­ter of loot­ing, out­rage and whole­sale murder, have with impun­ity grown fat off the colored races. Now it is the turn of the dem­agogues, with their coun­ter­feit liberalism. But the pro­let­ariat of today, whether met­ro­pol­itan or colo­nial, is no longer to be fooled by fine words as to the real end in view, which is still, as it always was, the exploit­a­tion of the greatest num­ber for the bene­fit of a few slavers. Now these slavers, know­ing their days to be numbered and read­ing the doom of their sys­tem in the world crisis, fall back on a gos­pel of mercy, whereas in real­ity they rely more than ever on their ...
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So strong is the belief in life, in what is most fra­gile in life – real life, I mean – that in the end this belief is lost. Man, that invet­er­ate dreamer, daily more dis­con­tent with his des­tiny, has trouble assess­ing the objects he has been led to use, objects that his non­chal­ance has brought his way, or that he has earned through his own efforts, almost always through his own efforts, for he has agreed to work, at least he has not refused to try his luck (or what he calls his luck!). At this point he feels extremely mod­est: he knows what women he has had, what silly affairs he has been involved in; he is unim­pressed by his wealth or his ...
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